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Playing With Revit Camera

November 10, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

digital_camera

After creating your 3D model in Revit, of course you want to show off your model. Why not? It’s easy. You may already have several cameras in your project right now!

In this post, we will discuss about placing and fine tuning our camera. And we will also discuss how to create a 3D section by controlling the section box.

Placing Camera

You can place camera by activating it from your ribbon, View tab, Create panel. Click the small arrow near the 3D view, and click camera button on the drop down menu.

camera

Then you can define the camera by two clicks: the camera position and target position.

After you define the camera, Revit will automatically open a new view. This view will show you what your camera see. Mostly we need to modify the view. Make sure modify is active, click the view boundary. You will see the blue grips on the rectangle sides. You can resize the boundary by dragging the grip.

You can fine tune moving your camera around by holding [shift] + mid button.

Bird Eye Elevation View

That’s how we can place the camera. Pretty easy, I guess. But sometimes we want to get the ‘wow effect’ by placing the camera in high or low angle. Try to place another camera, but before you define the position, look at the option bar. We can define the camera height. By default the offset is 1750mm (for metric) above active level.

So if we want to see from high angle, we can set the from level to the highest floor level. And high value in offset field.

Moving Camera Position and Target

We can move the camera position by using [shift] + mid button. But that’s not easy. An easier way is dragging the camera position and target. We can open 3 views (plan, elevation, and the 3D perspective) and work on those views. Click tile in Views tab, Windows panel.

Now find your 3D perspective view in your project browser. Right click, and select show camera from context menu. Now you can see your camera in plan and elevation view.

You can move your camera and target by clicking and dragging it. Vertically on your elevation view, and horizontally on your plan view.

Now, can you create a low angle camera?

Tips: You may need to turn off crop view if your camera is outside the clipping boundary

Creating 3D Section

Now create a new 3D view. It can be perspective or standard 3D view. Right click anywhere inside the view, and click view properties.

Find the section box option under ‘extents’ section. Activate it.

You will see a the section box. Resize it until cut your model. Click and drag the arrow.

Here is mine.

And this stair 3D section.

Can we render the 3D section? Why not!

If you decide to play around with perspective view, it might be quite difficult to control. You better try with parallel projection first!

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Source: CAD Notes – Playing With Revit Camera
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Tags: 3d perspective, camera, click, D Section, elevation view, option bar, plan elevation, position, section, target position, View No Comments »

Defining Room and Room Legend

October 19, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

Room is one type of information you can add to your Revit model. That’s why we call it building information modeling (BIM). It’s not just lines and text. It can hold a lot of information in your building model. This time we will define rooms in our design, and create a room schedule.

Let’s open again your project file. Open 1st floor plan view.

Defining Rooms

Activate room tool from ribbon> home tab> room & area panel. Move your pointer to your floor plan. you will see it’s highlight your rooms. Revit will automatically recognize your rooms separated by walls. Define rooms for rooms as you see below. Simply move your pointer inside a room, and click your mouse. Revit will place the tag automatically. If you don’t like it, uncheck the ‘tag on placement’ option on option bar.

Room Separation Line

There’s one room left. We don’t want the living room defined as one large room from front through the back. And we want to exclude the stair area from living room. But Revit can’t recognize them as separate room because we don’t place wall there.

We can separate them by placing room separation line.

This will activate sketch tool. Simply draw lines that separate the rooms. Snap the line to existing wall, and draw it to the next wall. Feel free to define your own room.

After you finish, try to activate room tool again. Place the room definition when you feel it’s correct. Pretty easy, right?

Renaming Rooms

By default, Revit will name your rooms by ‘Room’, and tag it sequentially from the 1st room you define. This is not correct of course. Who wants to have all rooms named by ‘Room’? We can rename it by clicking the room tag to select it. Then click again on room name (or tag number) to rename it. After you’ve done, hit [enter].

So what if I don’t place room tag? How can I rename the room? Easy, select the room (not room tag, you might need to press TAB to cycle between objects). Click on element properties from ribbon, contextual tab.

You can change the room name, room number, and other data available.

Room Legend

Let’s try to place room legend. But first, right click on your 1st floor plan name on project browser. From context menu, select duplicate view>duplicate with detailing. Rename duplicate with something like ’1st floor legend view’. It’s already active by default.

Activate legend tool on your ribbon, room & area panel. You will see the legend on your pointer. Find a place where you feel appropriate, click to place it there.